Vertigo of Late Modernity<\/a>) isn\u2019t convinced. He admits that \u201cthe setting up of barriers, of exclusion\u201d is characteristic of late modern society (31). But that is only part of the story. He points out that the upper and upper middle classes maintain their lifestyles only by relying on the services of the poor (nannies, cooks, house cleaners, etc.). Boundaries exist, but they are not impermeable; they are permeated (at least in one direction) on a daily basis. He cites studies that indicate that inner city ghettos are not cut off from American values and the American dream, but are awash in Americana. Foods, entertainment, media, styles cross the boundaries. We are far more culturally homogeneous, he argues, than the two-city thesis suggests.<\/p>\nInstead of a simple pattern of exclusion, Young discovers a society \u201cwhere massive cultural inclusion is accompanied by systematic structural exclusion,\u201d a society that \u201chas both strong centrifugal and centripetal currents; it absorbs and rejects\u201d (32).<\/p>\n
The institutions of inclusion that create a common culture are powerful: \u201cthe mass media, mass education, the consumer market, the labour\u00a0market, the welfare state, the political system, the criminal justice system.\u00a0Each of these carries with it a notion of universal values, of democratic notions of equality and reward and treatment according to circumstance\u00a0and merit. Each of them has expanded throughout the century and has been\u00a0accompanied by a steady rise in the notion of citizenship encompassing greater and greater parts of the population in terms of age, class, gender and\u00a0race. And within the period of late modernity the mass media, mass education\u00a0and the consumer and labour markets have, in particular, increased exponentially\u201d (32).<\/p>\n
Yet each of these sources of common cultural values is structurally exclusive: \u201cthe labour market incorporates more and more of the population\u00a0(the entry of women into paid work being the prime example) yet . . .\u00a0precisely at the time when work is\u00a0seen as a prime virtue of citizenship, well paid, secure and meaningful work\u00a0is restricted to a tiny minority. The criminal justice system is on paper a\u00a0paragon of equal rights. The British Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984,\u00a0for example, governs among other things the powers of stop and search. It\u00a0is a veritable cameo of neo-classicist notions of equality of citizens in the\u00a0face of the law and the need for \u2018democratic\u2019 suspicion, yet on the streets,\u00a0in practice, policing is indisputably biased in terms of race and class. . . .\u00a0Politics is an hourly interjection of radio and\u00a0television, the mass media speak on our part for \u2018the common good,\u2019 and\u00a0\u2018the average\u2019 man and woman \u2013 they even parade and interview joe public\u00a0with regularity yet the vast majority of people feel manifestly excluded\u00a0from political decision-making. Indeed even the tiny minority of active\u00a0party members often feel impotent and uninfluential. Mass education is the\u00a0major transmission belt of meritocratic ideas, it is the nursing ground of\u00a0equal opportunity yet . . .\u00a0its structures serve to reproduce class divisions, and\u00a0to exacerbate resentment. Lastly the mass media has a pivotal role; it has\u00a0grown immensely and occupies a considerable part of waking life. In 1999,\u00a0for example, the average person in England and Wales watched 26 hours of\u00a0television, listened to 19 hours of radio every week, and read, on top of that,\u00a0mass circulation newspapers and magazines. That is 40% of one\u2019s waking life\u00a0spent watching TV or listening to the radio, rising to 60% of your free time\u00a0if you are lucky enough to be in work. The lower down the class structure\u00a0the citizen \u2013 the more socially excluded if you want \u2013 the more mass media\u00a0is consumed. Thus, paradoxically, cultural inclusion is the inverse of structural\u00a0inclusion. The media carry strong notions of the universal citizen and\u00a0they, of course, depict the other institutions: the world of consumption,\u00a0work, education, politics and criminal justice. Yet despite this overall commitment\u00a0to social order, the very stuff of news is the opposite: disorder,\u00a0breakdown, mayhem, injustice\u201d (32-33).<\/p>\n
Young argues that we don\u2019t live in a dual city. Rather late modernity is a complex \u201cbulimic\u201d process of intake and expulsion.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sociologists working from various theoretical and political perspectives have worried that American society is fragmenting into two separate worlds. Our cities aren\u2019t single anymore. Cities are dual, and the tale of late modernity is a tale of two cities. Jock Young (Vertigo of Late Modernity) isn\u2019t convinced. He admits that \u201cthe setting up of barriers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sociology"],"yoast_head":"\n
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